In the treatment and care of turf such as grass or other ground covers of lawns, golf courses, softball fields, and the like, it is highly desirable to aerate the turf so as to enable air, moisture and nutrients to reach the roots of the grass, etc. The aeration of turf is generally performed by forming a pattern of holes in the turf. This tends to disturb the soil and roots beneath the surface of the ground cover and when moisture and fertilizers are applied to the turf, the root structure of the turf is able to directly absorb these nutrients and thereby the growth of the root structure is stimulated, making the turf healthier. Some of the prior art aerators typically have a plurality of coring tines which penetrate the soil and cut a generally cylindrical core or plug in the turf, and when the coring tines are removed from the turf they usually lift the core out of the ground, leaving a residue of cores of soil on the surface of the ground. The residue of cores of soil is undesirable on lawns and on playing fields such as golf courses and baseball fields where the condition of the surface of the turf is very important to the sports person. A type of core producing aerator is disclosed U.S. Pat. No. 4,773,486.
The typical prior art turf aerator utilizes its own weight to cause its coring tines to penetrate the turf. As a result of this force which presses the coring tines downwardly into the soil, some of the soil beneath the tines of the aerator and some of the soil at the sides of the tines becomes compacted. Such compaction of the soil tends to prevent moisture and fertilizers from reaching the root structure of the turf and thus tends to defeat the purpose of aerating the turf.
Accordingly it can be seen that it is desirable to produce a method and apparatus which performs the function of aerating turf while significantly reducing compaction of the soil and without leaving cores of soil on the ground surface, and which forms openings in the surface of the turf and disturbs the soil to stimulate the growth of the root structure of the ground cover.